REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA (Robert Elton Maas) (03/02/86)
GWS> Date: 28 Feb 86 09:56:08 GMT GWS> From: brahms!gsmith@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Gene Ward Smith) GWS> Subject: Sirius Supernova? GWS> Sirius A is about 2.3 solar masses (all I am saying is off the top of GWS> my head, I am hoping the experts will settle this one) and this is too GWS> small for iron core collapse, carbon detonation, etc. Thanks for the correction. I think I was remembering something I read more than five years ago, before we realized that although 1.4 solar masses or so is the limit for iron-core collapse, there's an awful lot of solar wind loss during the red giant stage so it takes more like ten or twenty solar masses at the outset to end up with 1.4 at the critical time. (Or was it 2.4? I forget?) I stand corrected, no supernova at all ever in Sirius. By the way, in latest Sky&Telescope there's a note on Sirius being reddish in recorded history (in fact about 600 AD), because at that time its white-dwarf companion was in the red giant stage. It's hard to believe the conversion from red giant to white dwarf could occur so quickly, although with Sirius gobbling most of the loose hydrogen as fast as it is shed, and ionizing & light-pressure-shoving the rest of the emitted hydrogen, I could imagine it within the realm of possibility. Any news since S&T publishing date on that topic that you know of? GWS> When Sirius is in its giant stage, it will presumably give some matter GWS> up to Sirius B. If this becomes a big deal, it looks like the usual GWS> nova (not supernova) situation. Well, even not being a supernova, it could upset Earth and not well enough protected space colonies a bit if it does. But of course, as I pointed out, it won't be any where near Earth then. GWS> Once more off the top of the old head, I recall Betelguese and Antares GWS> as being both about 400 light years away; hardly close enough to sterilize GWS> the planet Earth or whatever. I'm not sanguine. I understand the visible light flux from either will be about 3 magnitudes brighter than Venus as viewed from Earth, easily visible in day (or was that 3 magnitudes brighter than full moon?? Nah.) Due to the thermal cutoff of blackbody radiation being up in the gamma rays or at least x-rays, the x-ray flux will be tens of times more intense than the visible light. Right? That would play havoc with upper atmosphere and half-protected space colonies. GWS> Eta Carinae (?) is even closer to supernova. How close? (My guess of <1000yrs for Betelguese and Antares was a rather gross ballpark figure; would appreciate better estimate if you have it, likewise for Eta Carinae or whatever.) But up here in Northern hemisphere I'm not too worred about Eta Carinae -:) GWS> Sirius right now is firmly on the main sequence. No argument there, that was my position all along, why its demise isn't at all soon. GWS> ... one tenth the time of the Sun on the main sequence; i.e., GWS> about a billion years. I must have mis-remembered somehow. Thanks for correction. Ok, that proves my point even more, in a billion years not only will Sirius have drifted even further from Sun, but it'll be moot because the Sun will already be roasting Earth to death. GWS> How much has gone? I don't know, but why do you assume most of it? No, I assumed somewhere in middle, just had total life on main sequence wrong. What star could I have been thinking of that lives only one million years? Deneb is the most massive/bright star I know of nearby enough to be first magnitude, but even it must be at least 100,000 years if Sirius is 1 million years, right? GWS> What gives with you people making plans 100 or 200 million years in GWS> advance, anyway? I beg to differ. If current theory says we have only 200 million years before we roast, and that isn't enough time for fossil fuels to be re-supplied, then there's a reasonable chance it's absolutely urgent to get into space this time around instead of blowing our chance and having to wait for the next round of fossil fuels. We might be mistaken, worrying unnecessarily, but if we're right why blow it? Some people pray to God because if he exists it's worthwhile and if not it doesn't hurt. I think the argument for getting into space based on current theory is a lot better than the reasons for praying. GWS> Grow up, folks! Sorry, I beg to differ again. We are grown up, we are seriously considering the longterm survival of our species, based on current theories of the prognosis of the Universe, rather than just living for today and not giving a damn for the future. If we're wrong, we're wrong, but it's not because we aren't grown up, it's because current theory is wrong. In general, the best survival technique is to make use of the current scientific theories tempered with awareness of how new the theories are and how they might be wrong. Ignoring current theories completely is foolish in my opinion. Committing suicide just because the Heat Death will likely get us in the end anyway, is equally foolish. There's a middle ground where we guard against disasters our current theories predict, without totally giving up in cases our theories say we'll die anyway. If we were totally sure of the 200,000 year limit hence the 50-year practial limit, it would be right to enslave the world's economy to have a crash program to get space developed ASAP. As it is I'm content to generally push for space development, being ready to institute a crash program if our 5th-generation computers tell us absolutely for sure how the Sun really works inside and what or prognosis is.
weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener) (03/02/86)
In article <8603020306.AA00249@s1-b.arpa> REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA (Robert Elton Maas) writes: > If we were totally sure of >the 200,000 year limit hence the 50-year practial limit, it would be >right to enslave the world's economy to have a crash program to get >space developed ASAP. There really IS a bizarre religious cult in net.space! And what do you plan to do when people object? Shoot them and tell them it's for their greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat 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You make Hitler sound reasonable. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
jlg@lanl.ARPA (Jim Giles) (03/04/86)
In article <8603020306.AA00249@s1-b.arpa> REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA (Robert Elton Maas) writes: >I beg to differ. If current theory says we have only 200 million years >before we roast, and that isn't enough time for fossil fuels to be >re-supplied, ... Not true. Most of the oil and gas in Texas, The Gulf of Mexico, the Middle East, and the North Sea come from vegetation living in the Tythes Seaway which was a shallow strip of warm seas lying between (what became) North America and (what became) North Africa and Europe. This seaway existed (to various extents) between 120 and 80 million years ago. 60 to 80 million years is plenty of time for oil and gas formation. Besides, if the fossil fuels run out, we can use the (increasing) solar power to make hydrogen and oxygen from seawater. Or we might have home- made fusion soon. Of course, all these advances may not be able to keep pace with population pressure. Our culture may note survive the loss of will to advance. Someone in the future will continue though, and it WILL be possible for them to. This is not to say that I oppose the space program - I support it. I think we should devote more resources to it than we have. But, if we don't, we will become somone else's dead past - like the Romans, Greeks, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians before us. J. Giles Los Alamos
jlg@lanl.ARPA (Jim Giles) (03/05/86)
>... Most of the oil and gas in Texas, The Gulf of Mexico, the Middle >East, and the North Sea come from vegetation living in the Tythes Seaway >which was a shallow strip of warm seas lying between (what became) North >America and (what became) North Africa and Europe. This seaway existed >(to various extents) between 120 and 80 million years ago. 60 to 80 >million years is plenty of time for oil and gas formation. I misspelled Tethys. Also, the North Sea oil fields were not really part of the Tethys Seaway, athough the area was frequently connected to the Tethys realm. Since this area was fairly far north at the time, the vegetation responsible for the oil there may have predated the Tethys formation. The Tethys Seaway was first created about 160 million years ago. Remnants of it are still to be seen: the Mediteranean, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Aral Sea. >This is not to say that I oppose the space program - I support it. I think >we should devote more resources to it than we have. But, if we don't, we >will become somone else's dead past - like the Romans, Greeks, Assyrians, >Babylonians, and Egyptians before us. This last is a (loose) paraphrase of something from Jacob Bronowski's "Ascent of Man." "I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in the West by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into - into what? Into Zen Buddhism; into falsely profound questions about: Are we not really just animals at bottom; into extra-sensory perception and mystery. "... It sounds very pessimistic to talk about western civilization with a sense of retreat. I have been so optimistic about the acsent of man; am I going to give up at this moment? Of course not. The ascent of man will go on. But do not assume that it will go on carried by western civilization as we know it. We are being weighed in the balance at this moment. If we give up, the next step will be taken - but not by us. We have not been given any guarantee that Assyria and Egypt and Rome were not given. We are waiting to be somebody's past, and not necessarily that of our future. "... If we do not take the next step in the ascent of man, it will be taken elsewhere, in Africa, in China. Should I feel that to be sad? No, not in itself. Humanity has a right to change its colour. And yet, wedded as I am to the civilization that nurtured me, I should feel it to be infinitely sad. I, whom England made, whom it taught its language and its tolerance and excitement in intellectual pursuits, I would feel it a grave sense of loss (as you would) if a hundred years from now Shakespeare and Newton are historical fossils in the ascent of man, in the way that Homer and Euclid are. "... We are all afraid - for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. The personal commitment of a man to his skill, the intellectual commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man" - J. Bronowski J. Giles Los Alamos
jamesp@orstcs.UUCP (jamesp) (03/05/86)
>/***** orstcs:net.space / ucbvax!weemba / 9:01 pm Mar 1, 1986*/ >There really IS a bizarre religious cult in net.space! And what do you >plan to do when people object? Shoot them and tell them it's for their >greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat ...BILLYUNS and BILLYUNS of great's, about 400 lines worth... >greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat >children? You make Hitler sound reasonable. > >ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 set FLAME="ON, GAMMA-RAY INTENSITY" This message would take 12 minutes to transmit at 300 baud! 12 minutes at $.25/minute (long distance rates) for 300 sites would be $1200! (or are you just trying to be one of the top 25 news submitters, by volume?) $1200 could be used to feed 60 starving children in Asia for a month! If you really care about children, you will refrain from posting messages like this. Consider your hand THOROUGHLY slapped! You could save everyone the expense and keep your greats to THREE lines, at most! set FLAME="SMOLDER, SMOLDER" <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> "All that is gold does not glitter; tektronix!orstcs!jamesp Not all those who wander are lost." (In real life: James Perkins)
carroll@uiucdcsb.CS.UIUC.EDU (03/06/86)
I can't believe I paged all the way to the end...
irwin@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU (03/06/86)
I can't believe any dingbat would waste that much disk space on all of the net machines on the globe, not to mention the phone costs down the drain, but then, it takes all kinds. Who let this one out of his cage?
barnes@INFINET.UUCP (Jim Barnes) (03/06/86)
In article <8603020306.AA00249@s1-b.arpa> you write: >By the way, in latest Sky&Telescope there's a note on Sirius being >reddish in recorded history (in fact about 600 AD), because at that >time its white-dwarf companion was in the red giant stage. It's hard >to believe the conversion from red giant to white dwarf could occur so >quickly, although with Sirius gobbling most of the loose hydrogen as >fast as it is shed, and ionizing & light-pressure-shoving the rest of >the emitted hydrogen, I could imagine it within the realm of >possibility. Any news since S&T publishing date on that topic that you >know of? > I recently (two months ago?) read an article in the Boston Globe that said roughly the same thing - Sirius was reddish within recorded history. I posted the same question to net.astro. The general response received was that the redness was due to the time of day when the observations were made. ie. Sirius sets near the sun during the dog days of the summer, hence the reddish color is due to the sunset, not the color of the star. Current theories of stellar evolution do not allow for a star to evolve that rapidly. ------------------------- decvax!wanginst!infinet!barnes Jim Barnes
friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (03/06/86)
In article <8603020306.AA00249@s1-b.arpa> REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA (Robert Elton Maas) writes: > >I beg to differ. If current theory says we have only 200 million years >before we roast, and that isn't enough time for fossil fuels to be >re-supplied, then there's a reasonable chance it's absolutely urgent >to get into space this time around instead of blowing our chance and >having to wait for the next round of fossil fuels. Well, 200 MY is certainly long enough for a new set of fossil fuels. There are coal beds less than 70 MY old. Of course they are generally low grade coal(Lignite), but another few tens of MY would be enough to convert them to usable coal. Still, I do not think Homo sapiens will be around that long if we are restricted to the Earth. There are lots of other factors that could cause extinction. Most species either become extinct or evolve into something else in about 1 to 5 MY. -- Sarima (Stanley Friesen) UUCP: {ttidca|ihnp4|sdcrdcf|quad1|nrcvax|bellcore|logico}!psivax!friesen ARPA: ttidca!psivax!friesen@rand-unix.arpa
ethan@utastro.UUCP (Ethan Vishniac) (03/07/86)
In article <8603061510.AA04282@infinet.UUCP>, barnes@INFINET.UUCP (Jim Barnes) writes: > In article <8603020306.AA00249@s1-b.arpa> you write: > >By the way, in latest Sky&Telescope there's a note on Sirius being > >reddish in recorded history (in fact about 600 AD), because at that > >time its white-dwarf companion was in the red giant stage. > > I recently (two months ago?) read an article in the Boston Globe > that said roughly the same thing - Sirius was reddish within recorded > history. I posted the same question to net.astro. The general response > received was that the redness was due to the time of day when the > observations were made. I just read a note in Nature that said that Chinese records indicate that Sirius was its present color at or around 300 BC. -- "Ma, I've been to another Ethan Vishniac planet!" {charm,ut-sally,ut-ngp,noao}!utastro!ethan ethan@astro.UTEXAS.EDU Department of Astronomy University of Texas
chuck@dartvax.UUCP (Chuck Simmons) (03/08/86)
> Still, I do not think Homo > sapiens will be around that long if we are restricted to the Earth. > There are lots of other factors that could cause extinction. Most > species either become extinct or evolve into something else in about 1 > to 5 MY. > Sarima (Stanley Friesen) Most species have not had the advantage of our intelligence. Chuck Simmons chuck@dartvax